Page 70 of The Alien's Cruel Starfrost Domain

“What was?”

“What you said to Adefina. You do intend to run away again.”

I shrugged, careful not to dislodge the raya. “Maybe.”

Her wings’ high-pitched noise managed to convey agitation as she buzzed off my shoulder and around to look me in the face. “I’d heard that humans often lie. I never really believed it.”

“Starcaix don’t?”

Her nose wrinkled. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Dangerous? You mean if you get caught?”

Her frown deepened, and she hovered in the air with her fists balled up on her hips, elbows akimbo. “No. It can break the world.”

Struggling to wrap my head around what she was saying, I finished lighting the fire, then dropped down to sit on the hearth, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. “I think you’d better start from the beginning.”

By now, we’d stopped trying to lower our voices.

The door swung open, and Ramira entered, her pretty mouth twisted in a snarl as her gaze took us all in, finally landing on my position seated by the fire.

“So glad to see you’re all busy working,” she said in a snide voice. Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Adefina. “Khrint says he already told you His Lordship’s requested his luncheon in his rooms today. Is his tray ready yet?”

Without a word, Adefina picked it up and handed it to Ramira.

Her face already red with the heat, the Icecaix housemaid backed out of the kitchen, again glaring at me as she went.

“Why does she hate you so much?” Kila asked.

“No clue. Because she’s an unhappy bitch?”

Kila snickered, and I went back to the topic that actually interested me. “What do you mean, lying can break the world? Is that really what you believe?”

“It’s a fact,” Adefina said, wiping her hands on a towel and joining our conversation. “It’s happened before, the world breaking.”

“Lying is supposedly taboo on this planet,” a voice said from the doorway, and I glanced up to find Fintan bringing in an armload of firewood.

“Let me get some tea,” Adefina offered and hung the towel on a hook. I moved to help her with the tea, a hot Starcaix drink that tasted a little earthy and a touch floral, with a hint of fruit and a slight bitter undertaste. In many ways, it was remarkably like Earth tea—enough so that I often drank it when I found myself feeling homesick.

Moments later, we all moved to the small table in the corner where we sometimes had tea in the afternoon, taking a rare moment to sit before beginning to prepare the three different dinners—for the duke and any guests, for the Icecaix servants, and for the Starcaix servants.

As soon as we were all settled with steaming cups in front of us—and a thimbleful of tea for Kila—I continued the conversation. “Okay. So you’re saying lying broke your world before. Like…broke it with magic? How?”

“It’s the Caix creation myth,” Fintan said. “Don’t believe them when they say they don’t lie.”

“That’s a lie?” I asked with a grin.

“It is not!” Kila said.

“It most definitely is,” Fintan said solemnly.

“Ooh, tell the story, Adefina,” Kila urged the cook.

“The magic of Trasq came from the first King Caix,” Adefina said, her hands wrapped around her teacup as if drawing warmth from it and her voice taking on the cadence of a fairy tale. “Before him, our peoplehad no powers at all.”

“Unless you count the ability to travel between worlds,” Kila interjected. “But that wasn’t magic—that was technology.”

I leaned forward, fascinated despite myself. “So what happened?”

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